In Vino Veritas
by RedOrchid2
Summary: Ten years earlier, a dramatic event broke them up. When reunited by chance in a Muggle bar, will they be able to get past the past and make a future? My response to the WIKTT Bar Challenge. HGSS


**In Vino Veritas**

Ten years earlier, a dramatic event broke them up. When reunited by chance in a dark Muggle bar, will they be able to get past the past and make a future? My response to the WIKTT Bar Challenge.

_A/N: This is my response to the Bar Challenge at WIKTT. It's also very Spuffy inspired. A little One-shot I wrote after finishing chapter 5 of "Ten Things I Hate about You" (which you can read at Ashwinder along with my other story "Love Potion no. 9) and wanted to write something a little more romantic for a change. So here it is, hope you'll like._

_Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I would be writing HBP instead of this. :-))_

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The bar was dark as he stepped through the door. Soft lighting, a pool table to the left, a staircase leading up to a second landing, chairs and tables set into little groups to the right, a long bar desk straight ahead. He made his way towards it and sat down, draping his cloak over the back of his seat.

"Good evenin', Father, what'll it be?" a voice asked from close by.

"A pint of Guinness, please," he replied, putting one of those silly scraps of paper that Muggles considered money on the desk. A band was playing in a corner, soft rock, not too bad. He got his beer and started to relax a little, when a soft, all too familiar voice suddenly sounded behind him.

"Funny, I never thought I'd see you in a place like this."

He turned his head and looked into the eyes he hadn't seen for almost nine years. Hazel, with a dark green ring around the irises. He still remembered what they would look like when she smiled, when she cried, when she had said that she loved him… he looked over the rest of her and found that she hadn't changed much. Her face was the same, only more mature, and her brown hair had been tamed into a loose bun at the back of her head. A few curly tendrils had escaped it and now framed her face. He felt like he'd just travelled a decade back in time.

"Hello, Hermione."

She slipped into the seat next to him and they both looked straight ahead, sipping their beers in silence for a few minutes, neither knowing where to start, or what to say.

"So, career change or disguise?" she asked, after the bartender had been back to refill their drinks. He adjusted the white collar at the top of his usual black robes.

"Disguise, this is so much easier and more comfortable than dressing up in Muggle clothing. And people treat you with more respect." He turned his head, trying to ignore the way the tiny curls at her nape played against her soft skin as she moved. "So, how have you been?"

"Mostly miserable," she stated, looking into her drink. "I'm stuck at my boring job, which I only stay at because everybody is telling me to quit, I walk around in my big house, in which _everything_ is orange, and I go out to Muggle bars at night to try to find some living person I can talk to. How about you?"

"It hasn't changed much. I'm still at Hogwarts, trying to teach Potions to little brats who aren't interested, locking myself in my dungeons. Since Albus and Minerva died, nobody really makes an effort to drag me out of there… So, are you still…?"

"Married? Yes, technically, though I haven't seen my husband in three months as it stands. He mainly tours with his Quidditch team. It fell apart years ago." She shrugged. "Now I mostly see him at family reunions, where his mother spends most of the night nagging me because we don't have any children yet. It's rather horrid."

"I'm sorry."

"I should have listened to you. I was just so angry and heart-broken. I should have known that you were right. About everything…" she looked at him, a broken expression on her face. He closed his eyes as the memories came reeling back.

"_Hermione, marry him and you'll be utterly miserable. Don't throw your life away like this!"_

"_You're wrong! He loves me! We'll be happy together and I'm not throwing my life away!"_

"_But **you** still love **me** ! This whole relationship with him is about proving to yourself that you're over what happened, when you're clearly not. Once you'll leave this school, you'll have nothing in common."_

"_You couldn't be more wrong. I'm going to marry him and have a wonderful life. And you'll remain here in the dungeons, alone and miserable. Have a nice life._"

He could still remember the sound of his door slamming shut as she'd run out of his classroom. He took a long draught of his beer and thought about his life since then.

"Well, if it makes you feel better, I did remain in the dungeons alone and miserable," he said, which elicited a small smile from her.

"It doesn't, but thank you for saying it." They went silent anew, sipping their beer, listening to the soft music playing. Finally, she spoke again:

"Do you ever think about what could have been if that day had never happened?"

He didn't have to ask what day she meant. Thirtieth of April, her sixth year, four months after their illicit relationship had started with a New Year's kiss. The day Gryffindor tower had been burnt to the ground by some junior Death Eaters and the whole castle had been in terrible confusion from the break of dawn. The day she'd lost two friends in her dormitory to the flames and run out barefoot into the rain. The day he'd found her, freezing but not noticing by the lake, hidden behind some big mulberry bushes, crying her heart out. The day they'd made love right there in the wet grass with the rain pouring down, desperately seeking to escape from the reality of death and destruction by making their touch their only world. The day she'd become pregnant.

"I learnt long ago that no good comes from dwelling on what is no longer possible," he said hoarsely, looking down at his drink.

Because of all the commotion and the ensuing war-like status at Hogwarts, she hadn't realised what had happened until summer started. By then, she was already two months along. He remembered his astonishment when she'd told him, two days before the End of Year Feast. The situation had been very tense. The wizarding world was at war. It had been difficult enough to keep their relationship a secret from everyone during the year without adding extra pressure to it. He was her teacher and she was still underage in the eyes of wizarding law. Above the age of consent, yes, but not yet legally an adult. She still had one year left at Hogwarts and wanted to educate herself further and work for some years before she had children. She was only sixteen years old…

"What do you regret, Hermione, that you forgot to take your morning potion when fleeing from a burning tower, the moment by the lake or the decision we made because of it?" he asked, turning to face her.

"Nothing… and everything," she answered in a near-whisper, blinking away some tears that had come to her eyes. "I still think we made the right decision, I just don't understand – even now - why you did what you did… afterwards." She looked at him with those big hazel eyes that had haunted his dreams for so many years now. "Please, Severus, please just tell me what really happened."

He remained silent for a while, drinking his beer and thinking about the past. He hadn't been ready to be honest with her back then, but maybe he was now. Ten years had passed, perhaps he owed her an explanation. Slowly, he took another sip, cleared his throat and began telling her the truth.

_His mind took him back to his lab in the dungeons, where he was brewing a potion in the dead of the night. A potion to abort the child growing inside Hermione. His child. He tried not to think about it like that, to remind himself that it was only a tiny cluster of cells and that getting rid of it would solve a lot of problems. Still, his hand was shaking slightly as he added the final ingredients and stirred the potion the correct number of times. Bottling the contents of his cauldron, he cleaned up and walked into his adjacent chambers._

_Hermione was lying on his bed, dressed in a white nightgown and his favourite green bathrobe, having fallen asleep while waiting for him to come back. For a minute, he just stood by the bed and looked at her, watching her slightly parted lips as she breathed. He suddenly felt a pang to his chest, a burning pain he hadn't felt before. He wondered why this night seemed to bother him so much. It was a simple procedure, a necessary solution, and it wasn't like he loved the girl. They had ended up together because of lust and had over time developed a decent friendship. That was all. He knew she loved him, or so she said, though he always maintained that she was too young and too impressionable to really know her own feelings, but he'd always managed to keep his heart distant. He didn't love her and he didn't want a child. So why were all these feelings suddenly accosting him?_

_Gently, he shook her shoulder, stirring her from her sleep._

"_Here, take this. You should drink it while it's still warm."_

_She looked up at him and nodded, taking the phial from his hand and fiddling it nervously between her fingers._

"_Will it hurt?"_

"_No more than your average menstrual cramps, I would think."_

_He sat down beside her and, reacting on impulse, pulled her into his arms. She removed the cork and threw the potion back in one go. Grimacing, she replaced the cork and then, without warning, threw the phial into the burning fireplace, where it shattered into a thousand pieces against the stone. Then she put her arms around him, holding him in a fierce hug and crying silently against his chest._

_He held her that night as the cramps took hold of her body and she whimpered in pain. At times she would cry, and at times she would mumble incoherent things that he had a hard time making out. And yet, at other times, she would just lie in his arms, quiet and looking into space. He held her, stroked her hair and rocked her gently. Finally, she fell asleep from pure exhaustion, but he couldn't follow her. And it was then that it hit him. He loved her. Realisation came sneaking up on him as he was stroking the soft skin of her arm, tugging the covers closer against her to make sure she was warm. He, Severus Snape, was in love – with a sixteen-year-old student. He froze in mid-stroke, asking himself how this was even possible. His mind didn't have a logical answer to give. It only told him that his heart had been right – he loved Hermione._

_The next day, he ended things with her, telling her that they couldn't go on like this and that her pregnancy had been the alarm clock he'd needed to stop thinking with his balls and start thinking with his head again. He listed all the good reasons for why his decision was the right one to make and ignored her protests and tears with an unmoving face, while feeling that something inside him was falling apart. To get her to leave, to get her out of his face and make the pain of seeing her cry stop, he said many things that ranged between unpleasant and down-right cruel. He didn't think he'd ever forget their last words to each other:_

"_But I **love** you! Doesn't that mean anything?"_

"_Not really, no," he answered, keeping an iron grip on his cold façade, which threatened to break apart. She stood up and walked very close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing herself against him despite his protests._

"_Then look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me," she said, her voice trembling. Using all his mental strength and long experience as a spy, he lowered the mental walls in his mind, looked her deep in the eyes and said, his tone deadly serious:_

"_I don't love you."_

And with that, he'd walked out the door, leaving her in a heap on the floor in his bedroom, crying until she had no tears left. And now he was sitting in a Muggle bar, ten years later, still able to feel the pain as acutely as if it'd been only yesterday. He turned his head to look at Hermione and saw that she was crying silently into her empty glass. Acting on pure instinct, he lifted his hand to her face to wipe away her tears. She flinched, pulling away from his hand as if he'd just burnt her.

"Don't!" she said, rounding on him in anger. "Don't tell me that and then try to touch me like if nothing ever happened! You lied to me! At the moment of truth, when I most needed you to be honest, you _lied_ to me! How could you?! I never would have married Ron if not for that lie, if I hadn't been so devastated because you didn't love me. I've been trying to make sense out of that day for _ten bloody years_, and now you tell me that the reason behind it all was that you were _scared_?!!! God, I can't believe this!" She put her head in her hands, leaning against the bar. He didn't know what to say. She was right, he'd been a coward. A coward and a fool.

"Hermione," he started, but she interrupted him.

"I don't want to hear!" she half-shouted, drawing interested looks from other people in the room. She lowered her voice. "You broke my heart. It's never healed since." Again, she looked away from him.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think I broke mine equally permanently in the process," he replied, looking into his glass as well.

"I have to go," she said, her voice trembling. "I just – I just have to go."

She slid out of her seat and almost ran out the door, letting the door slam shut in a way that he recognised only too well. He slammed his fist into the bar in frustration and then leaned his head heavily in his hands, trying to pull himself together. Sweet Merlin! How was it possible that she could still get to him like this after all this time? Through the haze of emotions and swirling thoughts, he realised that a Muggle couple further down at the bar was talking about them.

"I don't get it, what happened?" the man asked, draining a half-empty glass in one go and turning to his wife, who was sipping a cocktail gingerly.

"Well, dear, I couldn't hear all the details, but it seems our dear Father over there broke his vows rather severely with that pretty young thing who just ran out the door some ten years back, and broke her poor little heart so completely, she married a man she didn't love just to get away from the pain. It's just like in i Thorn Birds /i – you remember that movie, dear, don't you? – with him caught between his love for the girl and his love for the Church!" she sighed dramatically.

"You don't say," her husband exclaimed, throwing Severus an interested glance. "And how can you be so sure that anything happened between them?" His wife lowered her voice marginally, though it was still loud enough for everybody within fifteen feet to hear without problem.

"Well, dear, I'm a woman, aren't I? We _know_ these things. Also, I heard them talking about a forgotten something, a moment by some lake and a difficult decision. The girl obviously got pregnant!"

"Whew! And he still chose the Church over her?" the man said in wonder. "The man must have some faith!"

"Actually, from what I gathered, he did it mainly out of fear. You see…"

Severus got up. He refused to sit here and listen to some ignorant Muggles comparing his life to some Muggle movie he hadn't even seen. It was ridiculous. Ridiculous and painful. Seeing Hermione walk out the door a second time had made the pain from his past return tenfold. He left his seat to go to the men's room, thinking about her with every step he took. When he got back out, he started making his way back to the bar to grab his cloak, when something made him look up.

At first, he thought he was hallucinating because of the pain and the alcohol. But when the hallucination started walking quickly towards him, he lengthened his steps to meet her. They came together by the stairs, Hermione walking into his embrace and pulling his lips down on hers without a word. Pressing her against the wall, he kissed her back with burning intensity, his movements almost desperate as he moved his hands into her hair and pulled her closer yet, caressing her face with his thumbs, feeling like he was drowning in the sweetness of her. They remained there for a long time, each utterly unable to even contemplate letting the other one go for more than the fraction of a second it took to breath between kisses. They clung to each other, oblivious of time, oblivious of space and, most certainly, oblivious of the Muggle couple at the bar, who looked at them with smiles on their faces.

"Well, dear, it seems like he's made a new decision," she said, turning to her husband.

"Let's just hope he sticks to it," he replied, handing her her jacket. "There are enough priests already, and she probably needs him more than the Church does." Smiling, the two walked out of the bar, throwing one last glance at the kissing couple under the stairs.

And the band played on.

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_A/N: A little fluffy, but I hoped you liked it. Please post a review. The kiss under the stairs is directly inspired by the Spuffy kiss at the end of "Tabula Rasa". I can't think of a better illustration than that. And I imagine the same song being played in the background too. :-)_


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